Without you I’m Nothing: Conversations between Windsor and Detroit
In pulling together a collection of local history books for the Bookmobile it emerged that there are two distinct sets of titles that indicate that Windsor’s history is only tangentially involved in Detroit’s and Detroit’s history is entirely free of any reference to Windsor. Official history stops at the border, but longtime residents of both cities will suggest a very different interpretation of place, one that is often narrated by a sense that the the two cities were, in the past, continuous and uninterrupted and that Windsor was one of many Detroit neighbourhoods rather than a border town of another country. To this end the van and its collection serves as a discussion platform to draw out the shifting relationship between the two cities. Visitors to the Bookmobile are interviewed about their impressions of their neighboring city and whether their travels between the two places have been slowed down or altered in the last decade. Some also relate stories regarding border crossings in other places. Tentatively titled, Without you I’m Nothing: Conversations between Windsor and Detroit, the video will present a collage of impressions about these border cities from local residents on both sides.
The Detroit-Windsor Bookmobile
The Detroit-Windsor Bookmobile was established in 1939 as a cross-border regional service as the New Deal sought to expand the outreach potential of libraries in the U.S. We are currently conducting further research into the history of this unique bookmobile.
Conduit
Conduit, is a short video loop based upon re-mixed archival footage of the construction of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel in 1927 and 1930 respectively.
Deterritorialzing Paul Bunyan
Although well known in American folklore, Paul Bunyan is an enigmatic character with dubious Canadian origins. James Stevens’ 1929 version of the story has him crossing the Quebec-Maine border proudly declaring his transformation from a backwoods habitant to a “real American”. A quick snapshot of Paul Bunyan in the 20th century has him changing from a worker’s hero to a kind of patron saint of big business, an earth moving giant that personifies the ideals of extraction in terms of economic and industrial interests. In 1954, Fortune magazine features a cartoon of him on their cover as the benign face of the logging industry. We are proposing to read between the lines of these histories to see the changing representations of Mr. Bunyan and to propose other stories of how we might review him in the 21st century: could he be considered among the early architects of NAFTA ? A subversive border crosser, roaming freely through the Northern territories between Canada and the US ?
